Making dirt year round

I opened up the refrigerator, looking for leftovers, and found a plastic bag full of garbage. Not figurative garbage, but a real bag of rotting fruits, vegetables and some other unrecognizable stuff. Another man might have thrown it away; I brought it to the garage.

My mate and I love winter. When those first cold days of August arrive in the High Country we both get excited. It is in our blood, Ellie is Swedish — for her people skiing is both a sport and a way to get to the store to buy lutefisk when the Saab breaks down. My heritage is French Canadian and Irish Catholic — we thrive on cold, damp and guilt.

Certainly we both enjoy the warmer times of year. We love to bike, hike and spend time in the desert and on the beach. But it is winter when we feel most alive.

Unfortunately, when we put away our bikes, shorts, sun hats and hiking boots we also decommission our compost bin. That changed this winter.

For those of you unacquainted with the practice of composting, let me explain. You have a container in which you place your household waste — rotting fruits and vegetables along with leaves and grass — and wait until it decays enough to turn into dirt. Hopefully this container is not located within smelling distance from your home. If you wait long enough — and bears, skunks, crows or your neighbors don't knock it over — in a few months' time' you get some free dirt.

I know what you are thinking, FREE DIRT!! I got to get in on that program! But full disclosure demands that this does take effort and can cause some hardships. Invariably, you have a bunch of garbage in your house waiting to be brought out to the composter. Often, the time between when something is declared compost worthy and when it is taken from your kitchen to the composter is a few days (or until I notice it). That ripening swill often smells badly and attracts fruit flies. On occasion my mate has hidden the offending compostables in the refrigerator.

So not to simply deem the entire enterprise a fool's errand, it is crucial that you keep your eyes on the prize — free dirt. Otherwise, one might question the effort, smell and inconvenience. Last summer alone we created close to a bucket of fine soil that would have cost us over five dollars.

So it is understandable that when the mercury drops and the snow falls for us, it is a mixed blessing. Yes, soon we will be sliding on snow, but on the downside the compost bin is frozen solid.

You can imagine my surprise and delight when Ellie brought home an electric indoor composter that not only heats the garbage, but stirs it as well. And even more joyful, this is all done in the convenient location of your home.

The owner's manual warned that initially you might notice a slight odor emanating from your new apparatus. They didn't mention that they considered “slight odor” one that could set your nose hairs on fire.

We decided to suffer through it and hope for an improvement. You would think after about seven weeks we'd get used to it — not so.

The smell aside, the indoor composter was convenient. No longer was garbage left on our counter waiting to be placed in the outdoor bin. Now, peels, rinds, scraps and the rest could go into the heated, indoor bin to spin, fester and percolate. You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs and you can't have a container of decomposing foodstuff without it smelling like, well, decomposing foodstuff.

After much pleading on my part, our new composter was moved into the garage.

Before then I wasn't aware that a vehicle could absorb odors. To be honest, after having the composter in our home for a couple of months and now in our garage where we keep our vehicles and recreational gear, I can hardly smell it any more. But, I have had hitch hikers ask to be let off in the middle of nowhere only minutes after I have picked them up.

My mate is fairly stink tolerant (our nearly two decades of marriage can attest to that), but when our cars and ski gear began smelling we almost gave up. Lucky for us there is a fair amount of composting info online. After spending hours in chat rooms commiserating with other composters from around the world Ellie found that the secret ingredient that we were missing was simple sawdust. Now, whenever we put a fresh batch of slop in our composter we lightly season it with sawdust.

Recall that Chief David Mara had intended to name the station after Michael Briggs, the officer killed in the line of duty in 2006. Some felt the move effaced the memory of Ralph Miller, an officer killed 1976 and the namesake for the now-defunct Chestnut Street station.

According to Levasseur, he and Mara had a heated exchange about the issue at the final aldermen's meeting of the year, Dec. 18. At least one person in the audience, later identified as a city police officer, was none too pleased with Levasseur, and by the alderman's account, he went beyond giving him dirty looks.

"It is quite obvious he became unglued, unhinged and manic in his actions," Levasseur wrote in an email to Mara. "To have to be pulled out of the room by the chief of police says quite a bit about his character and ability to effectively work for the Manchester Police Department."

Levasseur wants to lodge a formal complaint against the officer, whom he fears may try to retaliate against him, he said.

So far, the MPD hasn't identified the officer to Levasseur. He was not in uniform at the meeting. But an officer investigating the incident did contact the alderman late last week.

In his email, Levasseur raised the possibility of going to the Attorney General's Office if the department wasn't more responsive to his concerns. "I do not even feel safe simply going out for a beer because of this officer's actions. If he acts this way directly towards me in an open setting like a meeting at City Hall, what in the world is he going to do in a dark street?"

Speaking of the business community getting involved in the schools, the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce is sending out a survey to business owners and leaders to get their views on education issues.

Robin Comstock, chamber president, said the survey is the first step of the chamber's newly established education committee. "A lot of members are quite concerned about the challenges they see with the public education system," she said. "We believe a sound education system is the foundation of a strong community that attracts employers and jobs and that has a work force that is ready and capable."

This is not the first time the chamber has waded into education matters. In 2004, it presented a 120-page report, the product of months of interviews conducted by a research firm.

Amid the current uproar of school conditions and allegations of underfunding, the nearly decade-old report does offer a little historical perspective. For example, about 62 percent of businesses and residents at the time said schools were underfunded. The report also noted there were 100 high school classes that had more than 30 students.